Alumni Officer’s Report for 2021

CHARLOTTE MERSON

It has been a busy year for Nuffield Farming and myself; my husband and I welcomed our daughter Elizabeth Rose in April and have thoroughly enjoyed adjusting to life as parents. Thank you for the kind wishes and for bearing with me during a few months of reduced working hours.

With COVID continuing to restrict in-person events, virtual events have become the norm. These have continued to surpass expectations in terms of attendees and postevent views and engagement. These have enabled Nuffield Farming to connect to a far greater audience and reconnect with Alumni who have been unable to attend ‘in person’ in the past. Over the past year we have run the following events remotely: • Mini conference series Following the conference series, we held the Nuffield Farming AGM and Public AGM. This was the first time the event has been open to members of the public; it was thoroughly well received.

• Nuffield Farming open evening • Farm Walks

• Group events • Application drop-in sessions The mini conference series ran throughout October and November with 2019 Scholars presenting in groups of 4 or 5 with Q&A opportunities at the end of each presentation. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate these Scholars on their exceptional presentations and express my thanks to them for their flexibility and commitment to rehearsals and understanding new technology ahead of the conference series. The series was very popular and really opened Nuffield Farming to a wider and more diverse audience with over 1,100 registering, the recordings were made available on YouTube and on Nuffield Farming’s social media and have received thousands of views. January was a busy start to the year; we hosted a virtual open evening for potential Scholars. This was very popular with 45 joining us on the night- reassuringly, most of whom went on to submit an application. Sarah Pick was the guest speaker and gave us a fabulous over-view of her Nuffield Farming experiences with a particular focus on the GFP. Thank you, Sarah for your inspiring words and answering all questions so openly and honestly. Nuffield Farming was generously awarded a grant from Garfield Weston which enabled us to work with the Farming Community Network (FCN) and Focussed Farmers (FF). We delivered a programme of support for Nuffield Scholars and the wider farming community encompassing both business resilience advice and a support system to aid mental wellbeing. With COVID having such an impact over both 2020 and 2021 both of these topics were welcomed by participants.

Working with our partners, we implemented a 4-tiered approach to delivering the programme. 1. Informative videos for social media alongside a series of short videos from

Scholars for both social media and FCN’s

FarmWell website.

2. Farm walks

3. Series of online webinars focusing on different areas of business management 4. In-depth interviews on personal and business resilience hosted by FCN 5. Regular online workshops themed around wellbeing and resilience hosted by Holly

Beckett I would like to take this opportunity to express my thanks to the wonderful guest speakers and farm walk hosts: Heather Wildman, Mike Tyers, Seth Pascoe, Jamie McCoy, Jake Freestone, Richard Pennock and Jonathon Jones. All sessions stimulated interest from those familiar with the subject matter or who were new to the concepts. Feedback was positive both on how well the presentations and subjects were delivered and how engaging the hosts were throughout. The 2021 Scholars were treated to a brilliant ‘virtual’ Pre CSC, fortunately this did not dampen spirits or the quality of the guest speakers. We enjoyed presentations and discussions with; Robbie Moore, George Eustice, Ges Ray, James Thompson, Robin Manning, Anna Jones, James Chapman, Minette Batters and others. The event ran over a week and a half and the Scholars posed some excellent questions to our speakers. As restrictions eased over the summer months a number of Regions and Groups were able to host events again. In July I attended the Great Yorkshire Show for the annual Northern Region event. Both those presenting and the attendees were thrilled to return in-person. Encouragingly there was a lot of interest this year from potential Scholars and we ran twice monthly ‘Introduction to Nuffield’ events; understandably there was concern over when international travel could resume which led to a slight reduction in submitted applications. Fortunately, applications received were of a high quality and I was excited by the potential shown by the 2022 applicants. There was a mixture of face to face and zoom mock interviews and, with special covid precautions in place, all shortlisted were interviewed in person at the Saffrey Champness offices in London. They came in with a broad range of proposed subjects across a wide variety of the farming industry. Eighteen scholarships were awarded and we wish all of the new scholars the very best of luck. Operating remotely through COVID has clearly increased engagement and opened access to a larger audience. Now in-person events are returning, we look forward to supporting our Scholars and hearing from our Alumni about what impact COVID has had on their farming experiences and what has been learnt from it.